Leeza's L'il Rapunzel

my daily mantras

The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard

Some people dream of success...
while others wake up and work hard at it.
- unknown

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
- Wayne Gretsky

The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear.
- William Jennings Bryan

Whether you think you can or think you can't - you're right!
- Henry Ford

Anyone interested …

I'm going to apply and didn't know if any of you were interested. Pat's a great teacher and has oodles of contacts with Publishers in New York.
Leeza
x

fave quote

"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

— Rumi

my most favorite illustrators

I've been looking at a lot of illustrators lately, mostly because I have a almost-4-year-old and we go to the library a lot. I've seen nothing else out there that I like as much as these 3 illustrators. They are not new...and some are dead, but they make me happy:

Lauren Child, who is not only an amazing illustrator, she's got the most bizarre-kid-like sense of humor. I love Charlie and Lola. They are sweet and simple and terribly British.

Ezra Jack Keats is my absolute favorite. His drawings are simplistic but his use of texture and pattern are amazing. He has a way of describing temperature with his colors, so that you can almost feel the coldness of the snow as you look at the pictures.

I also love James Marshall of "George and Martha" fame. My daughter laughs and laughs when read the books. The hippos are just so rotund and Martha wears such ladylike skirts around her wide girth. He uses grey and yellow and red...and thats basically it...such a limited palate. He also illustrated "Ms. Nelson is Missing", which is my favorite book from childhood. Again...simple, deceptively simple.

I like pictures that create a mood with little complications. I'm really don't think my own work is like this at all, but its something that I strive for. Matisse called this "The genius of omission". Sometimes leaving things out is more important than adding things in.

Not the only one.

I just wanted to show Leezy that she wasn't the only groupie, I mean stalker, ur...uh..I mean fan, that's it, fan!


Jarrett's extradornarliy sweet, kind and pretty fiance' took this last year at the Texas Book Festival.

fave illustrator

I'm really loving all of the illustrator links that folks are posting. It's so cool to see new styles and website designs of these talented people! Inspiring too.

Someone that I have been really digging lately, is Graham Roumieu. He wrote and illustrated, "Me Write Book", a tale of Sasquatch from Sasquatch's perspective. (It's for adults btw, not for the kiddies!)

I just love his humor and thick inky lines and watercolor style. Very inspiring to me. Here is his webby-site:
http://www.roumieu.com/

p.s. I'm having trouble making links for this here blog, or changing the color of the text. My toolbar doesn't have the option for these things anymore. Drats! Is anyone else having that trouble, or is there something I'm forgetting to do?

illustrators

Clockwise from top: Mo Willems and myself posing for our 'author photo'; my friend jen, with one of my masterclass illustrator mates and David Ezra Stein, who really knows how to boogie!; Tomie de paola posing with "Carrot & Blanky" — he ws mocking one of the assignments he set in our class and clearly had a few too many vodkas; and Jarrett Kroscheska being very smiley for me at his signing after his presentation)


YAY! for Jarrett Kroscheska. I too, am a big fan and met him and gushed over his amazing presentation in LA last year. He was a real sweetie and we talked for a while. I even got a couple of pictures taken with him - hee hee. As well as Mo Willems (Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Knufflebunny, Leonardo the Terrible Monster). What I love about Mo is he is A) very passionate about what he does, B) incredibly brilliant at what he does C) Recognizes and addresses that it is ALWAYS about the kids. He gave me lots of advice and predicted the baby was going to be a girl, claiming he had never been wrong!!! I stay in touch with Tomie de Paola, I'm part of Tomie's Tomatoes where we (about 20 artists including the master himself) blog together and share advice, and work etc and David Ezra Stein, (Cowboy Ned and Andy, Ned's New Friend, Leaves, Monster Hug!). David and I e-mail each other alot and he always offers me good advice. He is very quiet and unassuming but has this cool outlook on life and constantly encourages me to go after what feels right and most dear to me in life. Amanda Shepherd, (Rules of the Wild, Who Loves Me?, Fiona Loves the Night) has been one of the kindest illustrators who responded to my e-mail after I had tolde her how lovely I thought her style was. Her work is done in oils, but I alwasy thought acrylic. She has great energy in her pieces and they're full of whimsy. Then last week, Bob Staake, e-mailed ME! (imagine that?) saying he stumbled across my site and really liked my work. So we've been going back and forth. He has oodles of experience and gazillions of clients. His work is primarily digital now, but he does such an excellent job in creating unusual perspectives and angles in his work. It makes them so interesting, I just stare and stare. (Read his blog, he's very funny) And lastly, Ian Falconer who creates the Olivia series. These are done in charcoal and gouache. The work is very minimliastic but he's fantastic at conveying such great emotion in the most simplistic way possible.

Favorite Illustrator

It was hard for me to narrow this down. I mean really, really hard. I have a lot of favorites.

So here are a few (only a few) with my current top illustrator at the bottom. Jarrett Kroscheska is a huge hit with the Pud. (she reads Monkey Boy to me at night) He has great ideas and a laid-back cool and fun style (plus he is super nice in person and left a comment on my myspace page, wheeeeee). Kelly Denato has such color, personality and composition to her pieces that I want to eat them. I fell in love with Polly Dunbar when we checked out "Down the back of the Chair" from the library. David Catrow is always super-duper fabulousness. I have been a fan of Dan Santat since I found his blog and his art in "The Guild of Genesis" did not disappoint. I discovered Diane Goode when we checked out "Alligator Boy" recently. (great book). Marla Frazee shines in Mrs Biddlebox. (Why are the re-doing the cover?It was so perfect)

My current fave,who never disappoints in line quality, watercolor washes and draws the things I want to draw one day. (mythological creatures and whatnot) is Gris Grimely. He is usually on the dark side but his illustrations are always incredible, detailed and I can spend hours pouring through them.

I probably remember someone else in a few minutes but I'll leave it for now.

Ode to Calef Brown

Marvelous illustrator and poet extraordinaire, Calef Brown.

I found his new blog back in June and excitedly gushed all over his comment box. He actually emailed me back and addressed me by name...Tricia (he said..."hi, Tricia" - OMG!) He sent me to an interview he did at Illustration Mundo for the advice I was seeking. Then he ended it like this...

"your sites are all wonderfully designed and feature your work really
well.i'd be glad to answer any questions you have. best, –calef brown"

I can die now, right??

Favorite Illustrator/Cartoonist

I am such a huge fan of Sergio Aragones - cartoonist for MAD Magazine, Groo the Wanderer and lots more! Mr. Aragones is said to be the fastest cartoonist in the world today and growing up reading all of his comics with my older brothers inspired me tremendously.

Favorite Illustrator

(So sorry I'm posting late again...time just gets away from me!)

This week's topic was a hard one for me. I only get to pick ONE illustrator? Do you know how hard that is for me? I have a favorites folder of over thirty artists bookmarked on my computer that I find inspiring and delightful. Obviously, I hemmed and hawed over this for a while.

What would make one stand out over the others? There would probably be an emotional attachment. If I saw a new book by this person, I would probably automatically purchase it without thought. They would also have to inspire me in some way. So, while I adore Marie-Louise Gay's art for it's whimsical nature, sigh and smile over the gorgeous books of Holly Hobbie, and love Peter Reynold's work for its pure truths and simplicity, I have to say my favorite is a classic. (I'm probably stretching the rules here, huh Courtney? :P .)

From the time that I was very little, I adored Eric Carle's books. They were colorful and lively and so different from anything else out there! (As a matter of fact, his work has been my inspiration for me to branch out with my art and head in a very new direction.) He's known the world over for his classic The Hungry Caterpillar and has even had an entire museum dedicated to his work.My favorite was Brown Bear, Brown Bear -What Do You See? I think it was that book that led to my lifelong obsession with colors and animals.

Reading to my son every night, Carle's books have become a staple in our nighttime routine. As a result I've started looking at them with a new eye. I've tried to find the reason I, and so many others are so drawn to his art. (And how I can incorporate what I love so much of his into my own work!)

What do you think it is?

Two questions:

TECHNICAL Okay, I have been working on my friend's Web site, and on her shopping page, you can click to enlarge the image of the tee to see the detail. It's supposed to come up in a pop-up window, which you can then close when you are done. It works on my machine and in Safari. This is where I created the page - in Go Live - and created the action for the pop-up thingy. When I open the site up on another machine either in Safari or Firefox, it doesn't appear in a pop-up at all, and the close window link doesn't work. Instead, you have to click the back button in the tool bar to get back to the page. Not what I wanted at all! Can anyone help me figure this out! It's driving me nuts. I had the same issue with rollovers on my own site and had to abandon them for the same reason. I am a dork.

Here's the link in case anybody has the brilliance to tell me what I have done wrong. http://www.sosillystuff.com/shop.html
Thanks in advance.

CRAFT FAIR Next year when the Renegdae Craft fair is happens in Brooklyn I wondered if anyone was interested in participating as a Group Soup deal. Thoughts?

Land-o-Johanna

Ode to a studio! I wrote a gushing blog post about my studio a few months ago, when I first moved in, and I'm happy to report that the lovefest is still going strong. Oh I could hug it's yellow walls, kiss it's grimy floor, caress it's paint caked table tops...and I DO, which gets me some pretty strange looks from the other folks in the building.

There are two natural sources of light in my studio, one that leads out to the hallway of the building and looks onto the blank windows of other artists studios, and the other is a skylight. Most of the other folks that have a space like mine in the building, cover up their window that leads to the hall so they aren't on display, but I've left mine open. I thought that this would help with feeling less isolated when I'm working, and I think it's done the trick. Folks are constantly waving or popping their head in to say hello, which I like very much, but I've found there are some limitations with this kind of window. First of all, nose picking is out. So is napping, table top caressing, mindless prolonged staring, tantrum throwing, weeping, and paint throwing. Not to say that I don't do those things in my studio (in fact I do, pretty much all of the time..) but I've had to come to accept that there will always be someone who witnesses it, which can be pretty mortifying. Especially if that person is a twelve year old viola prodigy who stares at you through the glass while you are crying (did I say crying? I meant unabashedly sobbing) at particular poignant moment in your audio Harry Potter book, thank you very much.

When the question first came up about what tool we couldn't live without, I immediately thought of my pen and ink. I thought and thought about how much I love my dip pens, so much that I came into the studio the other day, ready to take some photos for this here blog, when suddenly, I couldn't find one in the whole studio. Not one! I searched endlessly. Finally I came to the realization that I must have left them all accidentally at the slop sink in the hall the night before when I was cleaning up, and maybe the janitor threw them away?

It was the strangest thing, because I was forced for the rest of the day to work around not having my dear dip pens, and it was nearly impossible! It really made me realize just how much I need them. And secretly...and not so secretly, just how much I love them.

I replaced them with new, sharper tipped ones yesterday, and I spent a good part of today singing their praises. Dipping them endlessly into the waterproof black india ink, and drawing on every surface I could find, making up songs to them, writing poems to them in swirly inky writing. And I bet that viola kid saw it all...

Dee's Domain-mwahaha!

Since we moved to Waco, my view has been of the cookie cutter brick house next door and the red-tipped bushes outside. Not too impressive. I amended that by hanging my inspiration board in the window. Much more interesting to look at. (Although I need to clean up the board, it's looking a bit cluttered.) Beneath that are my tools of choice: brushes, pens, pencils, scissors, etc. I have to say though, that although I agree with Leeza (that my computer is extremely important, and will probably become more so the longer I work at this illustration gig) like Courtney, the tool I cannot live without is the pencil.
Ever since I recognized that drawing was something I wanted to do, the pencil has been my most constant companion. I feel more comfortable with a pencil than a mouse, brush or pair of scissors. I imagine it's how the Three Musketeers felt whenever they brandished their swords-the weight in the hand feels like coming home. When a pencil is in my hand, and a sketchbook is open before me, time falls away and the edge of my vision blurs. I can enter that spectacular place we artists know as "The Zone." The pencil is my guide and I cannot wait to see what other journeys it takes me on.

Frizz's hood

This was my hubby's office. I took it over and made it my art room. The desk was rescued from one of the city's old Catholic schools. From one window I see my neighbor's back door and from the other I see my monsters. The lighting sucks and it's pretty isolated from the rest of the house so....


...I actually paint on our beat up dining room table with a nice view of the tv. Out the front window is a view of our street in Detroit, my sad coneflower garden and empty birdfeeder. Don't worry, my neighbor lady keeps the birds and squirrels really fat.


I-pod Nano - my time machine, my mood enhancer, my reality expander, my concentration aid, my paint brush motivator, my doodle developer, my creative well connection. Music is so important in my life. It's my ultimate, everyday tool.

May I suggest...

I just reread the most incredible book. I think you all should read it. Its really lovely. Each phrase and paragraph is poetic and illustrative and it tells an incredible story. I spent the entire book imagining what the pictures could be like. In fact, my billy goat illustration has a very dreamy, Near Eastern feel to it because I created it while reading the book.
So if you have some spare time, read Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

Studio Tour- Brief

I work in the basement of our townhome My table is positioned right under the window to get the most natural light possible. It's a pretty spacious room and allows me to do laundry, paint and monitor the Pud's activities in a complete package. It also has a nice green view and is beautiful when the rose bush is in bloom or I can open the window for a nice breeze.

One of my favorite things to do is look at homes for sale in our neighborhood. I dream about the day we can set down more permanent roots and I always look for the perfect little studio space. One day, I wish for a room with lots of light, windows you can open, billowing curtains, ample storage space, cool stained glass lamps, hanging lanterns, twinkling white lights- you know, just enough quirky things to make it my space, mine-all mine.

As far as my favorite tool goes...I thought long and hard about this. I love my paints, palette and my brushes (which are both several years old, I'm attached) but the one tool I love the most is my mechanical pencil. It is from there that my ideas come to life. I think I enjoy that part the most, the getting the lines on the paper and feeling the creative juices start to flow.

The one thing I need to improve is my inking pen. Does anyone have any good suggestions for that?

BGG Revision

So I took everyone's advice, let it sit with me for a bit and this is my revision. I'm much happier with it and hope you all like it as much as I do. Thank so much to everyone who mades comments. (I know some people were on vacation etc, no biggie). I did flip the illo to see if it would work the other way round, but it looked totally off, so I turned it back instantly! But I did try it because I was curious.



If you'd like to see some sketches and how I arrived at the one I submitted first, please click here

Can I just say again how grateful I am to everyone. Since we started this group, I've really felt like our family has helped each other grow so much in a short space of time. You are all wonderfully inspiring to me and incredibly talented. You have eached helped me in so many ways and you may not even know it, so thank you. You are all a blessing to my life.

Around Leezy's Studio

1. What's the one tool in your studio you can't live without and why?
See below. I think I'd feel like my arm had been cut off if my computer died on me. (Oh, I could have nightmares just thinking about it) Besides being too expensive to replace "just like that" (she says clicking her fingers), it's basically my lifeline to the outside world and even more so now I'm going full-time freelance. I do a lot of business administration, e-mailing, internet work AND actual design and illustration on this baby. Paint brushes, paper those types of tools are much much easier to replace. Oh I have to lay down now ... and take some deep breaths (she sighs bringing back of hand to forehead .. this is all too much!!!)



2. What's the view outside of your workspace window?
See above. I'm fortunate enough to have a very 'green' view from my workspace. In the winter, when the foliage is gone, I have a magical view of the valley below. When the snow hits the ground and the lights are on in the valley, it looks like something off a greetings card. It's very charming and pretty and I am very lucky.

Great topic of the week D!

Trip, Trap, Trip, Trap

It may be a week late, but here it is! I think I only did 1/2 of the assignment, as we were to do a 2-page spread. I think Leezy better give us a lesson on measurements and stuff because I am simply an amateur with an inability to follow directions with numbers in them. Theoretically, the words would go in the bottom right...I just couldn't bring myself to fiddle with Photoshop 10 minutes before "What Not To Wear" comes on. Also my goat tush is cut off. Just so you know, the goat tush was really cute.

BGG/Frizz

Billy Goats Gruff

After a long weekend of travelling and a teething baby, here is my version of the BGG assignment. Now that I've seen everyone else's version, I see I misunderstood the assignment. (*SIGH*) I suppose we could just consider the second illustration as the one to focus on.

billy goat

Here it is guys! Great assignment. Too bad my troll turned into a crabby homeless guy. These things happen I suppose...